State announces members of second Common Core-focused Delaware Dream Team

STATE ANNOUNCES MEMBERS OF
SECOND COMMON CORE-FOCUSED DELAWARE DREAM TEAM

The Delaware Department of Education today
announces the 40 members of its 2014-15 Delaware Dream Team. This talented group
of educators will participate in a lesson study-inspired professional
development program run for the second year by LearnZillion, a
standards-aligned digital curriculum and professional learning provider trusted
for Common-Core guidance by over 520,000 teachers around the country.

Members of the 2014-15 Delaware Dream team
were selected through a statewide application process for their content expertise, grit, humility and collaborative
mindset. They represent the majority of districts in the state, with an
average of eight years of classroom experience. Among the group, 31 hail from
literacy disciplines, and 9 are from mathematics backgrounds.

“We are proud
to recognize some of the state’s most accomplished teachers and provide them
the opportunity to challenge themselves professionally as they collaborate to
create high-quality materials that will help teachers and students across
Delaware,” Secretary of Education Mark Murphy said.

Chief Academic Officer Michael Watson
credited the work of last year’s Dream Team for providing all teachers in the
state with access to rigorous, vetted Common Core-aligned resources created by
their Delaware peers.

“Last year’s team told us how valuable the
chance was to plan and collaborate with fellow outstanding educators from
across the state. We are excited to work with this new team of top teachers,”
he said.

The Delaware Dream Team
teachers will first convene at TeachFest, a three-day professional development
to be held from October 23rd-25th, 2014. At TeachFest,
the teachers will dive
into an intensive period of highly structured coach and peer collaboration led
by LearnZillion. Following Delaware’s TeachFest, the Delaware Dream Team will
use LearnZillion’s professional learning platform to continue working with
content coaches in a collaborative, online professional learning communities
(PLCs). During this process, they will translate their proven teaching methods
and classroom expertise into formative assessment tools and resources that will
be made available to teachers in Delaware, and around the country, through
LearnZillion’s free Common Core resource library.
Finally, the Delaware Dream Team teachers will participate in three half-day
workshops during the winter and spring to develop teacher-leadership skills
alongside members of the 2013-14 Delaware Dream Team.

“We’ve seen that the combination of
deep content knowledge and greater understanding about how to apply the new
standards yields tremendous instructional fruit,” said LearnZillion CEO Eric
Westendorf. “We look forward to the 2014-15 team experiencing the same strong,
positive impact on their practice as last year’s team and benefitting from the
wisdom and experience in this influential state network of teacher leaders.”